Bared to You

partners kicked in and we glided across the floor
with sweeping steps.
When the singer’s voice faded with the music,
we stopped, breathless. We were pleasantly
surprised by applause. Cary gave an elegant bow
and I held on to his hand for stability as I dipped
into a curtsy.
When I lifted my head and straightened, I found
Gideon standing in front of me. Startled, I
stumbled back a step. He was seriously
underdressed in jeans and an untucked white
dress shirt that was open at the collar and rolled
up at the sleeves, but he was so damn fine he still
put every other man in attendance to shame.
The tremendous yearning I felt at the sight of
him overwhelmed me. Distantly I was aware of the

---

band’s singer pulling Cary away, but I couldn’t tear
my gaze away from Gideon, whose wildly blue
eyes burned into mine.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped,
scowling.
I recoiled from his harshness. “Excuse me?”
“You shouldn’t be here.” He grabbed me by the
elbow and started hauling me toward the house. “I
don’t want you here.”
If he’d spit in my face, it couldn’t have
devastated me more. I yanked my arm free of him
and walked briskly toward the house with my head
held high, praying I could make it to the privacy of
the town car and Clancy’s protective watch before
the tears started falling.
Behind me, I heard a come-hither female voice
call out Gideon’s name and I sent up a prayer that
the woman would stall him long enough for me to
get out without further confrontation.
I thought I just might make it when I passed into
the cool interior of the house.
“Eva, wait.”
My shoulders hunched at the sound of Gideon’s
voice and I refused to look at him. “Get lost. I can
show myself out.”
“I’m not done—”
“I am!” I pivoted to face him. “You don’t get to
talk to me that way. Who do you think you are?
You think I came here for 
you
? That I was hoping
I’d see you and you’d throw me a goddamn scrap
or bone…some pathetic acknowledgment of my
existence? Maybe I’d be able to harass you into a
quick, dirty fuck in a corner somewhere in a pitiful
effort to win you back?”
“Shut up, Eva.” His gaze was scorching hot, his
jaw tight and hard. “Listen to me—”
“I’m only here because I was told you 
wouldn’t

---

be. I’m here for Cary and his career. So you can
go back to the party and forget about me all over
again. I assure you, when I walk out the door, I’ll be
doing the same to you.”
“Shut your damned mouth.” He caught me by
the elbows and shook me so hard my teeth
snapped together. “Just shut up and let me talk.”
I slapped him hard enough to turn his head.
“Don’t touch me.”
With a growl, Gideon hauled me into him and
kissed me hard, bruising my lips. His hand was in
my hair, fisting it roughly, holding me in place so I
couldn’t turn away. I bit the tongue he thrust
aggressively into my mouth, then his lower lip,
tasting blood, but he didn’t stop. I shoved at his
shoulders with everything I had, but I couldn’t
budge him.
Goddamn Stanton!
If not for him and my crazy-
assed mother, I’d have had a few Krav Maga
classes under my belt by now…
Gideon kissed me as if he was starved for the
taste of me and my resistance began to melt. He
smelled so good, so familiar. His body felt so
perfectly 
right
against mine. My nipples betrayed
me, hardening into tight points, and a slow, hot
trickle of arousal gathered in my core. My heart
thundered in my chest.
God, I wanted him. The craving hadn’t gone
away, not even for a minute.
He picked me up. Imprisoned by his tight grip, it
was hard to breathe and my head began to spin.
When he carried me through a door and kicked it
shut behind him, I couldn’t do more than make a
feeble sound of protest.
I found myself pressed against a heavy glass
door on the other side of a library, Gideon’s hard
and powerful body subduing my own. His arm at
my waist slid lower, his hand delving beneath my

---

my waist slid lower, his hand delving beneath my
skirts and finding the curves of my butt exposed
by my lacy boy shorts underwear. He wrenched
my hips hard to his, making me feel how hard he
was, how aroused. My sex trembled with want,
achingly empty.
All the fight left me. My arms fell to my sides, my
palms pressing flat to the glass. I felt the brittle
tension drain from his body as I softened in
surrender, the pressure of his mouth easing and
his kiss turning into a passionate coaxing.
“Eva,” he breathed gruffly. “Don’t fight me. I
can’t take it.”
My eyes closed. “Let me go, Gideon.”
He nuzzled his cheek against mine, his breath
gusting hard and fast over my ear. “I can’t. I know
you’re disgusted by what you saw the other
night…what I was doing to myself—”
“Gideon, no!” 
God.
Did he think I left him
because of that? “That’s not why—”
“I’m losing my mind without you.” His lips were
gliding down my neck, his tongue stroking over my
racing pulse. He sucked on my skin and pleasure
radiated through me. “I can’t think. I can’t work or
sleep. My body aches for you. I can make you
want me again. Let me try.”
Tears slipped free and ran down my face. They
splashed on the upper swell of my breasts and he
licked at them, lapping them away.
How would I ever recover if he made love to me
again? How would I survive if he didn’t?
“I never stopped wanting you,” I whispered. “I
can’t stop. But you hurt me, Gideon. You have the
power to hurt me like no one else can.”
His gaze was stark and confused on my face. “I
hurt you? How?”
“You lied to me. You shut me out.” I cupped his
face, needing him to understand this one thing

---

without question. “Your past doesn’t have the
power to push me away. Only you can do that, and
you did.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” he rasped. “I never
wanted you to see me like that…”
“That’s the problem, Gideon. I want to know who
you are, the good 
and
the bad, and you want to
keep parts of yourself hidden from me. If you don’t
open up, we’re going to lose each other down the
road and I won’t be able to take it. I’m barely
surviving it now. I’ve crawled through the last four
days of my life. Another week, a month…It’ll break
me to give you up.”
“I can let you in, Eva. I’m trying. But your first
response when I screw up is to run away. You do it
every time and I can’t stand feeling like any
moment I’m going to do or say something wrong
and you’re going to bolt.”
His mouth was tender again as he brushed his
lips back and forth over mine. I didn’t argue with
him. How could I, when he was right?
“I hoped you’d come back on your own,” he
murmured, “but I can’t stay away anymore. I’ll carry
you out of here if I have to. Whatever it takes to
get you back in the same room with me, talking
this out.”
My heart stuttered. “You were hoping I’d come
back? I thought…You gave me back my keys. I
thought we were over.”
He pulled back, his face set in fierce lines.
“We’ll 
never
be over, Eva.”
I looked at him, my heart aching like an open
wound at how beautiful he was, how broken and in
pain he was—pain I’d caused to some degree.
On tiptoes, I kissed the reddened handprint I’d
left on his cheek, clutching his thick silky hair in my
hands.
Gideon bent his knees to align our bodies, his

---

Gideon bent his knees to align our bodies, his
breathing harsh and erratic. “I’ll do whatever you
want, whatever you need. Anything. Just take me
back.”
Maybe I should have been scared by the depth
of his need, but I felt the same passionate insanity
for him.
Running my hands down his chest in an effort to
soothe his trembling, I gave him the hard truth.
“We can’t seem to stop making each other
miserable. I can’t keep doing this to you and I
can’t keep going through these crazy highs and
lows. We need help, Gideon. We’re seriously
dysfunctional.”
“I saw Dr. Petersen on Friday. He’s going to
take me on as a patient, and—if you agree—he’ll
take us both on as a couple. I figured if you can
trust him, I can try.”
“Dr. Petersen?” I remembered the brief jolt I’d
felt at seeing a black Bentley SUV when Clancy
pulled away from the doctor’s office. At the time,
I’d told myself it was wishful thinking. After all,
there were countless black SUVs in New York.
“You had me followed.”
His chest expanded on a deep breath. He
didn’t deny it.
I bit back my anger. I could only imagine how
terrible it must be for him to be so dependent on
something—
someone
—he couldn’t control. What
mattered most at that moment were his
willingness to try and the fact that it wasn’t just talk.
He’d actually taken steps. “It’s going to be a lot of
work, Gideon,” I warned him.
“I’m not afraid of work.” He was touching me
restlessly, his hands sliding over my thighs and
buttocks as if caressing my bare skin was as
necessary to him as breathing. “I’m only afraid of
losing you.”

---

I pressed my cheek to his. We completed each
other. Even now, as his hands roamed
possessively over me, I felt a thawing in my soul,
the desperate relief of being held—finally—by the
man who understood and satisfied my deepest,
most intimate desires.
“I need you.” His mouth was sliding over my
cheek and down my throat. “I need to be inside
you…”
“
No.
My God. Not here.” But my protest
sounded weak even to my own ears. I wanted him
anywhere, anytime, any way…
“It has to be here,” he muttered, dropping to his
knees. “It has to be now.”
He chafed my skin ripping the lace of my
panties away; then he shoved my skirts to my
waist and licked my cleft, his tongue parting my
folds to stroke over my throbbing clit.
I gasped and tried to recoil, but there was
nowhere to go. Not with the door at my back and a
grimly determined Gideon in front, one hand
keeping me pinned while the other lifted my left
leg over his shoulder, opening me to his ardent
mouth.
My head thudded against the glass, heat
pulsing through my blood from the point where his
tongue was driving me mad. My leg flexed against
his back, urging him closer, my hands cupping his
head to hold him still as I rocked into him. Feeling
the rough satin strands of his hair against my
sensitive inner thighs was its own provocation,
heightening my awareness of everything around
me…
We were in Gideon’s parents’ house, in the
midst of a party attended by dozens of famous
people, and he was on his knees, growling his
hunger as he licked and sucked my slick, aching
cleft. He knew just how to get to me, knew what I

---

liked and needed. He had an understanding of my
nature that went above and beyond his incredible
oral skills. The combination was devastating and
addicting.
My body shook, my eyelids heavy from the illicit
pleasure. “Gideon…You make me come so hard.”
His tongue rubbed over and over the clenching
entrance to my body, teasing me, making me
grind shamelessly into his working mouth. His
hands cupped my bare butt, kneading, urging me
onto his tongue as he thrust it inside me. There
was reverence in the greedy way he enjoyed me,
the unmistakable sense that he worshipped my
body, that pleasuring it and taking pleasure from it
was as vital to him as the blood in his veins.
“Yes,” I hissed, feeling the orgasm building. I
was buzzed by champagne and the heated scent
of Gideon’s skin mixed with my own arousal. My
breasts strained within the increasingly too-tight
confines of my strapless bra, my body trembling
on the edge of a desperately needed orgasm. “I’m
so close.”
A movement on the far side of the room caught
my eye and I froze, my gaze locking with
Magdalene’s. She stood just inside the door,
halted midstride, staring wide-eyed and open-
mouthed at the back of Gideon’s moving head.
But he was either oblivious or too impassioned
to care. His lips circled my clit and his cheeks
hallowed. Sucking rhythmically, he massaged the
hypersensitive knot with the tip of his tongue.
Everything tightened viciously, then released in
a fiery burst of pleasure.
The orgasm poured through me in a scorching
wave. I cried out, pumping my hips mindlessly into
his mouth, lost to the primal connection between
us. Gideon held me up as my knees weakened,
tonguing my quivering flesh until the last tremor

---

faded.
When I opened my eyes again, our audience of
one had fled.
Standing in a rush, Gideon picked me up and
carried me to the couch. He dropped me
lengthwise on the cushion; then hauled my hips up
to rest on the armrest, arching my spine.
I eyed him up the length of my torso. Why not
just fold me over and fuck me from behind?
Then he ripped open his button-fly and pulled
his big, beautiful penis out, and I didn’t care how
he took me just so long as he did. I whimpered as
he shoved into me, my body struggling to
accommodate the wonderful fullness I craved.
Yanking my hips to meet his powerful thrusts,
Gideon battered my tender sex with that brutally
thick column of rigid flesh, his gaze dark and
possessive, his breath leaving him in primitive
grunts every time he hit the end of me.
A trembling moan left me, the friction of his
drives stirring my never-sated need to be fucked
senseless by him. Only him.
A handful of strokes and his head fell back as
he gasped my name, his hips rolling to stir me into
a frenzy. “Squeeze me, Eva. Squeeze my dick.”
When I complied, the ragged sound he made
was so erotic my sex trembled in appreciation.
“Yeah, angel…just like that.”
I tightened around him and he cursed. His gaze
found mine, the stunning blue hazed with sexual
euphoria. A convulsive shudder wracked his
powerful frame, followed by an agonized sound of
ecstasy. His cock jerked inside me, once, twice,
and then he was coming long and hard, spurting
hotly into the clutching depths of my body.
I didn’t have time to climax again, but it didn’t
matter. I watched him with awe and pure female

---

triumph.